Jenny Johnson
(1996)
How would you characterize the influence of your YWW experience in your life?
It changed my life! Growing up in small town Virginia, I passed time in high school (probably much like you) scribbling things down in a notebook, but it wasn’t until I attended YWW that I called myself a poet, because at the workshop I was taken seriously as a poet and that made all the difference.
What’s the best advice you can give a Young Writer (in general or in your specific genre)?
Get to know as many people as possible that are amazing and different from you. If you don’t know how to connect with someone right away, say hello again. Maybe you haven’t asked them the right questions yet!
What do you find yourself most often reading or listening to lately and why?
I have been thinking a lot lately about what Gerard Manley Hopkins called inscape, the singular essence of things in the natural world that leaves its mark on our senses when we look at it closely. So besides poetry, I have also been reading Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World by Emma Marris and Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity by Bruce Bagemihl. A recent favorite book of poems is Bringing the Shovel Down by Ross Gay. Two graphic novels that I highly recommend are Fun Home by Alison Bechdel and Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse. I also love to have my mind exercised by bell hooks, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde.